The invention relates to asset management systems, and more particularly, to asset management systems for tracking, storing, and utilizing greenhouse gas emission information to facilitate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
For the past several hundred years, increasing deforestation and burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil, have resulted in an extreme increase in the concentrations of heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” in our atmosphere. The implications of this rise in greenhouse gases have recently been brought to the forefront by political and environmental initiatives.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”), a scientific intergovernmental body tasked with evaluating the risk of climate change, has concluded that most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the twentieth century is very likely due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases resulting from human activity. Consumers have since become more selective in purchasing “green” products having a reduced impact on greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. In turn, large corporations and industries increasingly strive to offer more ecologically-sound products and industrial processes to comply with environmental regulations and to remain competitive in the global market.
To track national trends in emissions and removals since 1990, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) develops the official U.S. greenhouse gas inventory each year. In addition to the U.S. inventory, greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions can be tracked at global, state, and local levels, as well as by companies and individuals, according to known methods. This information may be used to facilitate targeted reduction in actual GHG emissions, as well as to facilitate emissions trading and other GHG emission-limiting practices, such as those promoted by the Kyoto Protocol.
What are needed are apparatus and methods for efficiently gathering and using GHG emission information to reduce current and/or future GHG emissions.